More of my so-called life

Well after months of things mostly going smoothly and not-breaking -down on the road I guess it was inevitable that my/our luck would change and the trend began somewhere in South Dakota when Shaker and I pulled out of a filling station and looking in the rear view mirror noticed that the trailer was riding on the axle and the right-side leaf spring we’d broken a few months back whilst in Georgia was now matched by the one in my drivers-side mirror.

SHIT!!

I would have said months ago....and I’m not saying I didn’t stress (maybe just a lil bit), but I certainly did not get too bent out of shape and if got a maybe-a-little sideways about the issue it was only for a minute and I don’t know where my relative calm has come from (emphasis on “relative”) but I’m better than I used to be and I maybe just have a little more faith in the universe and it would have looked really idiotic for me to get in a tizzy about the broken spring—and maybe I didn’t freak out too much ‘cause I know now from having broken two of them that the repair bill on the job ain’t so bad and that if you can find a trailer parts store that the part ain’t too hard to find and sure enough we were close to a trailer dealer and they didn’t have it but there was another store less that a mile away and yes, they had the part and they didn’t sock it to us on labor and they got us in and out in 45 minutes (hell we even made the gig on time) and I just want to say publicly that if you ever have a breakdown in the midwest that the guys at Hawk truck and trailer will take good care of you and if it’s not fun to have a breakdown it’s certainly not that big a drag when you get things fixed, and fixed right and at a fair price.

SO....

Shaker and I got to the gig on time and the band played two nights at the Fort Randall Casino without incident and were well taken care of and after dropping Shaker off at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport I had the oh-so-fun occasion to drive the 1000+ miles back to Western NY and at least the weather wasn’t bad—I didn’t hit rain til Ohio–and if I complain about driving 22 hours to get home from a gig just smack me upside the head, okay? I play music and get paid to do it and I haven’t had to go to a 9-5 job in a verrrry long time....okay lets’ say I get paid to travel and the playing music part is free.

So I make it back to WNY and we have some good shows: The Jamestown Ice Arena gig goes well; Mick Hayes was awesome (he played before us....and oh yeah, BIG Thanks to Mike Ferguson at the Arena and to the Jamestown Jets and to Deb Yoakam and Dan Warren and all at WHUG) and the gig at the GIN MILL was (and I’m starting to get used to this) off the hook (as always HUGE thanks to Ed and Maribeth for taking great care of me) and I forget to expect thing to break/and or go wrong and I get up Saturday morning with the notion that I’ll change my guitar strings and I go to the music store and get a pack and come back and start changing them out and a break a bridge peg and in all the years I’ve been playing guitar would you believe this has never happened before (it hasn’t) and of course I don’t have any spares (why would I?) And I go back to the music store and I notice that my running lights aren’t working again (okay—that was another glitch on the ride home from SD) but thankfully I know what the issue is (thank’s Randy Hofgren for the diagnosis) and it’s an easy fix: just a blown fuse (don’t know why that’s happening, think it has something to do with the trailer) but when it happened the first time Randy knew what to check and I checked what he told me to check and found and auto zone easy enough and replaced the fuse and was on my way and never got stressed about the situation.

So from the music store I go to the Auto Zone and I get more fuses and pull the blown ones and replace and I go to walk around to the back of my vehicle to check and see if things are working and—I never had that moment of apprehension when you close your care door that maybe you’re about to regret the act, and I guess I closed the door myself and walked to the rear of the vehicle and sure enough when I walk back around the door–all the doors--are LOCKED.

The engine is running.

I have no spare key.

I could really be freaking out right now: I have what I’m thinking is going to be a good new venue to play at tonight. This venue is at least an hour away. The clock is ticking...

My cell phone is IN the car.

No biggie.

I go inside and ask if I can borrow their phone and I call triple A. “Sure, we’ll put you on priority and have a driver there in no time, prob a half hour or less, wait outside if you can and wave him in when you see the wrecker.”

So I go back outside and wait. And I wait. And I wait some more and I know how when you’re in a hurry it’s seems like every little thing takes a long time but after what seems like at least 45 minutes of standing in the cold I come back inside and ask “Does it seem like I’ve been waiting 45 minutes or so?”

“At least,” says the dude behind the counter who was kind enough to let me use their phone.

“Would ya mind if I used that phone again?”

And it’s “no worries,” and I call triple-A to see where the wrecker is and they say he’ll be there in 15 minutes or less and I go back outside in the cold and wait a good half-hour (not complaining about AAA–by-the-way...they’ve saved my day many, many times) and finally the dude shows up and I know my vehicle is not an especially easy one to break into without breaking windows but takes the dude a good 15 minutes to get ‘r done and now I am definitely pushing the arrival time envelope and I go thank the AAA guy and go back and grab my guitar (which BTW has no strings on it at the moment) and get on the road to see that YES I’ll need gas, and now that I have the more major issues handled I realized that I have not really eaten today and that I am very, very hungry and that these issues will have to be addressed-- arrival time be damned–and that with road conditions being a bit sketchy (there’s ice here and there) that yeah, I’ll be lucky to make it on time and I don’t really know my way (I don’t have an exact address) and I really wanted to make this drive in broad daylight and to quote Bob Dylan it ain’t dark yet but it’s getting there...

So I guess I drove right past the venue on the first try.

The venue is a micro-brewery-housed-in-an-old-barn-out-in-the-country called the Sprague Farm and Brew Works. The Sprague’s–Brian and Minnie--are a very, very nice couple I met while playing at the Gin Mill (they claim to have been there on research) and after I suspect I’ve gone to far I call the barn and get Brian on the phone and yes, If I’m in the town of Venango I have indeed gone too far...So I turn around and Brian is waiting by the road to flag me in (funny, I didn’t see the neon beer mug on the side of the barn on the first time by). And I walk into just one of the coolest venues I’ve played in a while. The Barn is rustic, has character and best of all it’s pretty dang FULL. And I hustle all my gear in with the help of some of Brian’s friends and I get it set up quick enough (thanks Bill Kuhns). and last but not least I plug in my guitar and the tone is just awful....the nut had fallen off the neck when I’d pulled the old strings off and nothing but string tension is holding it on and I think maybe I put the bridge on backwards and all I know is my beautiful guitar sounds like ASS.

I have a room full of people waiting for me.

I have anxiety dreams that look exactly like my current reality.

So after a few minutes Brian comes by and asks if every things okay? I was supposed to start at six o’clock. It’s now a little after and he’s totally cool it’s just that he can see that I’m stressed out.

I’m not freaking out. But the stress is on my face and I know it.

“I’ve got a guitar you can use,” he says.

“Awesome,” says me.

And he goes and grabs the guitar and it’s a nice enough acoustic but I plug it in and there’s no sound coming through the PA.

There are people waiting. The room is now quite full.

After a few minutes I give up on Brian’s guitar and plug mine back in and it still sounds like ass but it’s all I got and the show must go on so I launch into “Honky Tonk Life,” with a little explanation of why I’m late and ya know, sometimes I just know when I’m going to like an audience and this is one of those times and I get to the end of the song and the applause is overwhelming and it only gets better as the night goes on...ass-sounding guitar or not.

I ended up playing FOUR encores.

And the conclusion is: it ain’t always easy, but I LOVE what I do.

Thanks so much Sprague Farm and Brew Works, Brian and Minnie and to everyone who came out. You gave me a great ending to a “country Song” kinda day.

For more info on Spague Farm and Brewery visit www.sleepingchainsaw.com